


Small Comfort

by Demmora



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Meta, Missing Moments, canon gore mention but not a lot, someone needs to give Corvo a hug, the type of man to only ever love once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 23:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7196210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demmora/pseuds/Demmora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is one of my older fics which was requested after our lord and tormentor Harvey Smith made the comment on twitter that Corvo Attano was the type of man to only ever love once. Immediate heartbreak ensued. People asked me to fix it. I looked down and whispered "yea okay but have you considered this: <i>more pain</i>."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Comfort

He looks so lonely, sitting out there on the shoreline, elbows resting on drawn up knees—empty hands cradled between—eyes fixed on nothing as though he holds something precious only he can see.

Today was a quiet day, with nowhere for him to go, no leads to follow, no one to chase. He spent most of his time with Emily, sitting in on her lessons and adding in some other small details that Callista had never read in any text book, amusing the girl with stories and parlor tricks—slights of hand which made her face light with wonder— indulging in her desire for his affection and attention. The smile on his face had almost been happy when Emily had laughed. Almost.

But Emily is in bed now, and with nothing to do and nowhere to go, Corvo is a man cut adrift, agitated, lost, buffeted around until eventually sinking into solitude. She’s watched this happen several times now, ever aware of the dark figure sitting out on the wharf under the tower, motionless and silent through the night until dawn breaks and he is gone.

She feels like a self-conscious fool now, as she makes her way toward him, careful of making her footsteps as loud and open as possible. Wallace has a bad habit of coming up behind people, a true servant’s instinct. He’d had the misfortune of doing it to Corvo one night, and while the Lord Protector had managed to avoid injuring the man when he’d spun, Callista had no desire to test his reflexes now.

“Nice night,” he comments to her as she comes to a stop beside him.

Callista’s attention, which had been fixed primarily on him, looked up at the skyline. Smoke is billowing from somewhere in the city, creating a dark smudge in what would be an otherwise perfect night, the Wrenhaven River turned the color of fire under the setting sun.

“What’s that expression of Samuel’s?” she asks, trying to force some warmth into her voice, something which might sound genial, rather than just respectful. It doesn’t come easily to her, nothing social does, but she feels she ought to try. Someone has to. “Red sky at night?”

Corvo nods, his face half hidden by his hair which has been let loose from its tie. She realizes he has bathed recently, she can smell the soap around him.

“Red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky in morning sailors warning.”

“Is it true?” she asks, awkwardly lowering herself down onto her knees beside him, sliding onto one hip, careful not to spill her precious offering.

“So far,” Corvo replies, forced to clear his throat when his voice breaks. Irritably he reaches up to his throat then aborts the gesture, his hands falling back to their empty clasp between his knees.

Callista knows he was tortured, Teague Martin had told her about it, even though she hadn’t wanted to hear. He’d gleamed the facts from Campbell’s journal, and recited it as though it were scripture. He’d seemed almost…impressed, in a sickening sort of way the, zealot in him both appeased and approving of the suffering of the righteous man who failed to break. Callista had felt only horror, and couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was like to have bones broken and fixed for the sole purpose of having them broken again. The mark on the side of his cheek still looks angry, testament to being branded like chattel at the hands of a supposedly pious man, under the watchful eye of the man the Empress had relied upon to be her eyes and ears, all the while plotting to usurp her power. Callista didn’t know what waited for Burrows, but she’d thought it fitting that Corvo had branded Campbell as a heretic. It was a small and pure poetic justice in a world gone seemingly mad with corruption. She’d asked Martin about Corvo’s damaged throat, imagining that the man had screamed himself hoarse with agony. Instead she’d been even more horrified to find out they’d forced him to drink poisons to weaken his resolve, and then so he wouldn’t die too soon, had forced charcoal down his throat to induce vomiting, ruining his insides and grinding away at his throat until it was little wonder he could talk at all. So if he wouldn’t confess his guilt, neither could be proclaim his innocence at the gallows—so Martin had said. She hadn’t like the way he’d smiled when he had. There was too much personal admiration in it. And not necessarily for Corvo.

Remembering her reason for coming, Callista offers up the warm mug in her hand. It was chipped, everything was in this Outsider forsaken pub, but she’d managed to salvage some brandy away before Lord Pendleton drank it all, and had even managed to squirrel some honey from Lydia’s rapidly dwindling stores. She’d kept the rest for Emily, it made drinking the elixir’s easier.

“My uncle…my uncle always said warmed brandy with Serkonan honey was good for…” she trails off under his blank gaze when it turns on her, feeling the color rise to her cheeks. She hopes he cannot see it, and if he can that he’ll mistake it for the red sheen of the water reflecting on her skin. “Well, he said it was good for most things, and I just thought, well what I mean to say is, I…”

“Thank you,” Corvo stops her, warm smile appearing out of nowhere as he reaches out to take one of the mugs from her hand, his much larger hands momentarily enveloping hers. She is surprised at how soft they are, riddled with cuts and scars to be sure, but the actual pressure of his grip is careful and light, like a man who knows his strength and has learned to move gently with it. She’s seen him running around the yard, practicing his skills, running faster and jumping higher than anyone she’d ever seen before. Sometimes he even seems to blink out of existence, appearing moments later, moving at the speed of light on an opposite ledge or much higher up than she thought a man could climb. She could have only wondered what he was like as a youth.

“Quicker, but less precise.” he replies, and Callista blinks. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Had she said it out loud? She must have done, how else could he have known what she was thinking? How embarrassing… but he doesn’t seem abashed so she carries on.

“I find that hard to believe,” she smiles, tentatively from behind her own mug, taking a gentle sip, “Everyone knows stories about the young Lord Protector, fought off three men one handed in front of the Emperor, just to prove that he could.”

He makes a little harsh sound, which Callista realizes is a laugh. “Thankfully old age has made me realize the merits of moving quietly and staying out of sight.”

“You’re not old,” Callista corrects, then pauses to think about it. Other than Cecelia and Emily, she is the youngest of the group and often feels it when they talk of old times. “Well…you’re not as old as Havelock. Or Samuel.”

Drinking deeply from his mug Corvo gave a little grimace, something between a smile and a wince. “No, I feel much older.”

Setting her cup down, Callista reaches for him and puts a trembling hand on his arm. When he looks up his expression is surprised, but he doesn’t shrug her away.

“You are doing the work of three men,” she says seriously, thinking of Admiral Havelock who is becoming increasingly more cloistered, Lord Pendleton who seems to be nervously drinking himself to death, and Martin, who consults with books and moves men about like pieces on a chess board. And how all three gathered for whiskey and cigars, hours before Crovo would return, covered in the filth of the city, often wounded but never complaining. While they congratulated themselves on a hard days work. It makes her blood boil. 

“More than that, you are doing what history books tell us requires an army. And you’re doing it with…with kindness, without chaos.” She smiles at that, hearing the wonderment in her own voice. “You walked in to the High Overseer’s lair, and harmed no one but Campbell…Pierro told me…he said when you came back you hadn’t even fired a single bullet and your blade was as clean as the day he’d made it…it’s little wonder you feel…”

“Worn down? Hollow?” Corvo supplies helpfully, taking another pull from his drink and letting his eyes slide shut. Shamelessly Callista finds herself drinking in the way his throat works when he swallows, the way his jaw twists when he half smiles and the way some of the tension eases from around his eyes, just ever so slightly, crinkling with amusement when she speaks again.

“I was going to say tired,” she smiled, glad that her understatement made him laugh rather than angry. “I’m tired just watching you come home every night…morning… And all I’m doing is teaching young Emily.”

Corvo wags a finger under her nose, favoring her with a sardonic look. “Don’t sell yourself short, that task used to belong to twelve different teachers and umpteen nurse maids running around after her. And me of course.”

“And you,” Callista acknowledges, feeling the brandy warming her up from the inside and creating a dizzy little euphoria in her brain. “I imagine only you could keep up with her.”

“Jessamine…”

The name falls from his lips in broken shards, splintering in the air around them. Callista holds her breath, knowing that the break in his voice has little to do with torture of the body, and she feels the alcohol turn to acid in her stomach, burning away at her gut.

“Her mother,” he repeats, eyes squeezed shut against the world as he speaks the words she knows must be ripping him apart inside, “she could always keep up, even in those gods awful shoes…” he turns to her and smiles, a heartbroken little expression which reminds her so much of Emily she wonders if the rumors might really be true. “I hated those shoes, I always told her they’d be impossible to run away in…if…if I wasn’t…”

 _If you weren’t there,_ Callista thinks, hating herself for the tears she can feel welling up in her eyes, feeling like a fraud to his pain, wishing for all the world to be anywhere else but witness to his soul crushing guilt, his absolute knowledge that he’d failed…

On impulse she leans over, and wraps her arms around his shoulders, pressing a kiss to the side of his face, lips brushing against a days worth of stubble and feeling the calloused outline of the scar. She’d thought he’d jump away like a man scalded, but instead he merely stiffens, but gradually by degrees he leans into her, his head falling to her shoulder, letting himself be held, their heads pressed together in a tight but chaste embrace. When he looks up into her eyes there is a moment she feels like he might devour her, but the look shutters away, drawn inward as he physically pulls back into his own personal void of space. 

“I’m sorry,” Callista manages to croak out, feeling more than a little embarrassed at her actions. “I just thought…I mean you looked like you needed…”

She’s surprised when his left hand reaches out to envelope her right, pressing it into the wet sand of the wharf, squeezing gently, his thumb working over her knuckles. There’s a slight tingle there, and unwillingly her eyes are drawn to the mark on the back of his hand.

“Don’t ever apologize for being kind,” he tells her, voice little more than a low murmur, “It is a trait much maligned in this world, by people who think ruthlessness and cruelty will carry you just as far to the end, never thinking it might change the place they hope to reach. Like this plague.”

“The plague? The plague is a natural catastrophe…you can’t blame that for the city…” she trails off when he looks at her, and sees something so entirely rare it takes her breath away. _Rage, unholy unfathomable rage.  
_

_“_ I have reason to believe the plague was brought here on purpose.” His voice is barely audible over the sound of the rising water as the tide comes in. “I cannot prove it…not yet, but the things I have seen and heard…”

“But why, why would someone—”

“Before I left, Burrows was insisting that the plague was a result of the poor and migrants. Before the plague, he was complaining of the poor and migrants, of the lower classes who were flooding into the city in the hope of a better life. He didn’t appreciate Jessamine’s desire to accommodate them, even less so her plans to reform the lower slums.”

Seeing her confused expression, he carries on. “Where Burrows and Campbell own property and rely upon the work of the poor to fund their own personal wealth. Improvement to the area would have cost them money. It would have made more, eventually, but…the Reformation Act of Fair Pay and Living was the last act Jessamine wrote before…” he trails off, blinking rapidly. “The bill was never found.”

“Then how do you know about it?”

“I was there,” he replies, in leaden tones, his fingers which had continued to caress her own stilling as he stares out over the river and to the tower on the horizon. “I helped write some of it.”

“But surely…I mean, they wouldn’t, would they?” she thinks in horror of the things she’s seen, of the staggering people with blood pouring from their eyes, vomiting up their organs, of rats which devour living flesh in mere moments and spread the plague like wildfire. And then she thinks of Burrows, and of Campbell, of men who would kill an Empress, steal her daughter, and subject an innocent man to six months of torture. Of men who would poison good men like her uncle who couldn’t be bribed. Of men who preached propriety and considered themselves to be the pillars of society, while they whored and wined their lives away, while others starved and the stench of death carried over the wind like the end of days. 

“Outsider’s eyes,” she breathes, feeling her own rage catch in her chest, turning bright hot eyes onto Corvo who is watching her now with solemnity. “Outsider’s bloody black eyes, they would, wouldn’t they?”

Corvo simply nods. “Yes, I believe they would.”

For a moment she closes her eyes against the world, unable to cope with the certainty in his voice, of the sheer horror of it all. “Curse them.”

“No,” Corvo says, with some more heat in his voice, eyes dancing with something new, she is taken aback to think it might almost be amusement. “ _Convict_ them. By the law. Men like that think that because they write it they are above it. They have weaved their own rope, I am merely trying to find the right length to hang then with.”

For a while Callista says nothing, and only the sound of the river and gulls passes between them. 

“You are a good man Corvo Attano, no really,” she insists when he snorts, patting her hand as tough she is sweet to say so, “You are a good man. I’m glad Emily has you to look up to.”

He glances sidelong at her from behind strands of his dark hair, favoring her with a slight lopsided smile. “I could say the same of you.”

“I’m no one,” Callista flushes, looking to the ground where their hands are still joined. It’s odd how comfortable it is, even with that dark mark there, livid against his flesh. “She’ll forget me as soon as she’s back to where she belongs.”

She starts with surprise when she feels his other hand reaching for her, fingers crooked under her chin to turn her face toward his. “Kindness will never be forgotten, Callista. And you have been very kind.”

This time he looks as though he might kiss her because he wants to, and not because he’s a man starved for oxygen in need of the kiss of life. But he pulls away again, sliding his hand from hers and absently pushing his hair back from his face.

“Thank you, Callista. For the brandy, and…for everything.”

Realizing that she has been dismissed, though not unkindly, Callista nods and begins pulling herself up, brushing down her trouser legs and stooping over to pick up her forgotten mug of brandy. She considers it for a moment, then tosses the dregs to the river.

“Change your shoes.” he says suddenly out of nowhere as he drains the last of his own brandy, offering the empty vessel up to her waiting hand.

Callista looks down at her boots, twisting herself round to look at them from every angle, wondering if the heel has broken. “My shoes? What’s wrong with them?”

“They have that ridiculous heel.” He gives her a little sardonic laugh which sounds less harsh, and Callista feels as though he is pulling himself back together through the little things, one small piece at a time.“Promise me, find something flat you can run in…just… _promise me._ “

The sincerity in his voice offers to room for argument, and Callista merely nods, seeing the relief in his face when she does. She has some military styled boots somewhere in her trunk. And if it will help Corvo feel better about her and Emily’s safety she’ll wear them. If nothing else it will help her keep up better with Emily when the little girl decides she’s had enough of history and wants to run.

“I will. Good night, Corvo.”

“Good night, Callista.” he replies, eyes already fixed on the horizon again. It might be a trick of the light, the way the sun is cresting over the water in that moment to push away shadow, but for a moment he looks almost at peace, rather than simply alone.

Callista turns to look back once, expecting to find him gone by the time that she does. She’s surprised to still find him sitting there, legs crossed and slumped over as he looks at his empty hands, although for all she knows he might be cradling some trinket, or a locket. It wouldn’t surprise her to know that he carried something of the Empress’.

She had a feeling he’d carry her memory for the rest of his days, but perhaps with time it might bring him comfort, rather than pain.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://thebibliosphere.tumblr.com/) and feel free to leave a fic request either there or here in the comments :)


End file.
